You would expect a certain climate change skepticism in Perth’s Western suburbs, particularly in Nedlands, where the residents have the reputation of being a little over conservative. But this home-owner is ready for the hole in the ozone layer to poop down whatever it dares. His gate will see no sun faded grey paint. Such a tightly tailored example of shade cloth I have never seen. And I’m not sure how those shaded points are going to deter eastern suburb ne’er do wells from vaulting the battlements. By Nick S.

Yuccas not much chop when the ravening hordes of baby-bonus dependant suburbotards start clamouring at the barricades screaming for another flatscreen tv.
That’s cultural capital. That’s bougainvillea.

Saw this once before and when I returned to Worst it I couldn’t find it. It’s not just the gate, it seems the owner has to wrap everything like some knid of boomtown Christo. You can see some more wrapping work in the background.

Given it has been such a tumultuous week in politics, I was surprised when not one newspaper reporter phoned me to ask what I thought of the Rudd/Gillard leadership battle – particularly as I not only conducted a similar coup here in WA a few months ago, but have also read the Bob Hawke autobiography which partly deals with the similar hassles he had with Paul Keating back in the early 1990s. If anyone should be considered an expert on political coups, it’s me.

Indeed I was quite perterbed to see that one of the few mentions I got in the weekend rag was some innocuous comment I made about something to do with what Colin Barnett said about the bushfire victims at Margaret River.

For one, as a principled opposition member and self confessed socially concerned leftie, I think the people who lost their homes should be allowed to go to court to receive proper justice. However, it is a dangerous POV to have given I too might one day be the premier of a government which decides it’s totally acceptable to burn people’s houses down via incompetently implemented safety policy.

As I sat around pondering this issue, I was told of this strange place in Nedlands that had bits of shadecloth tied to the owner’s wrought iron front gate. At first I thought: “How wierd.” Then I had had a flash – this could form the basis of my revolutionary fire protection policy. I immediately phoned my new planning advisor, Al MacTiernan, and told her of my plan to cover every house in Perth with shadecloth. It would, I argued, be similar to Kevin Rudd’s successful pink bats scheme, which was put in place not only to protect people from the heat, but also save household electricity costs. I even came up with a catchy slogan for this new policy: “Shadecloth – saying no to bushfires”.

So I suggessted to Al that we start the new scheme in my own seat of Rockingham, given there are still a few scrubby tracts of land down there, where some of the residents may well be in harm’s way if there was a bushfire. Al, however, had a different idea – being the mayor of Vincent, she wanted to put more shadecloth on the Herdsman Lake gazebos before tackling the Leederville aquatic centre.

After a few minutes of arguing we came to a compromise – we would put shadecloth over the Perth to Rockingham rail link, which would not only make the corridor shadier, but ensure commuters didn’t have to look at any parts of Kwinana as they passed by.

Another win for me. That’ll show Colin “I’m going to rebuild the fucking Perth foreshore” Barnett.

somebody read out an article this morning with Gary Gray where he said that 80% of his constituents in Rockingham had expressed a preference for Kevin Rudd and were mightily pissed off that Gillard was still there. Gray suggested that if an election were held tomorrow he would lose the seat of Brandt.

Is that really out of the question? Perth being the largest city in the largest state in Australia and a center of economic growth I’d expect the numbers for visitors overall to be at least that high. Maybe not all of them make it to the waterfront, but then that depends on how one defines the area.

No BSwaM he’s using the fact that most commuting traffic by train from the southern suburbs enters the city via the Esplanade Station, “therefore they will be visiting the Waterfront Project”. when all they are doing is walking away from the site and getting to their 9-5 job in the CBD, then they are being counted again as they head back home on the train.
60,000 visited the Belltower last year, Dick Court predicted 400,000.

9,000,000 is three times as many visitors to the Statue of Liberty each year.